Legendary RPG series: Guild Wars

Time jump in 2004: World of Warcraft entered the world stage after a long announcement and celebrated the success that many players — and of course US developer Blizzard — had wanted in advance. The attraction and the resulting popularity of the online role-playing game were such a tremendous that the genre was viewed from one day to the other as the future of the gaming. And of course, countless other gaming studios hoped to jump on the hype train just in time and so powerful to shit a lot of coal.

Finally, at first glance, it appeared attractively attractive to produce a single role-playing game and earn money thanks to monthly subscription fees for years. However, it was a troubling: the maintenance of servers, the support of the steadily growing community and the necessary further development of the game, so that it remains interesting even after several years, turning out to be expensive investment.

Furthermore, pessimists referred to the established competition of Ultimo online via Ever quest to Dark Age of Camelot, which slowly lost their customers. Most players were less concerned about the content of their purse, but rather their free time: If you wanted to play an online role-playing game with fervor, you had to calculate numerous hours a week or even a day. So that's why it made a few makes sense to keep two MMORPG subscriptions running at the same time.

So much fun GW1 is still doing today: We have recently looked in!

A bold plan

All these problems also saw the developers Mike O'Brien, Patrick Wyatt and Jeff Strain. They worked until 2000 at Blizzard and were involved in the programming of the Battle.net and the first steps of World of Warcraft. With their common experience, they dared the step towards self-employment and founded Arena net in March 2000. The trio had very own ideas that could realize it almost five years later in the form of Guild Wars (Buy Now €49.95). The idyllic tutorial area in Guild Wars 1 is even too nice for some players — after all, the Kingdom of Salon is completely destroyed after the tutorial. Source: Guild

As the first concrete announcements to Guild Wars were on the table, many initially trusted the roast: Arena net planned a technically high-quality role-playing game that could be played over the internet with his friends and would not cost any monthly fees. The makers promised that you only need to pay once — just like an ordinary game without online connection. Only: How did Arena net finance such a daring project?

First, the team was purchased from the Korean Publisher NCS oft, who had already celebrated a great success with his fantasy-MMORPG Lineage (1998), and in particular dominated the market in domestic South Korea. That alone should have provided for a huge financial syringe with which the founders of Arena net could implement their vision.

Next you wanted to develop standalone add-ons at regular intervals. Although they also cost as much as a full price game, but there were no running fees for that. And finally, the developers tricked with the implementation of the central multiplayer part, which is dramatically distinguished from the competition: the Syria game world was divided into large areas in which up to eight players could stay at the same time. Only in the few, central cities couched hundreds of online adventurers like in other MMORPGs. Many players in a stain exist only in central cities like Ramadan — there also often found the lively trade of Guild Wars. Source: Guild This Knight had several advantages: you could play a lot better together with his own friends without being disturbed by strangers trolls. On top of that, it was a lightweight, Guild Wars with cinematic intermediate sequences and dramatic events. And last but not least, the game world was simply credible, because, for example, the just killed Miniboss did not stand for 15 minutes later again on the street again — as it was used by other MMORPGs.

At the same time, NCS oft and Arena net's valuable resources in the art: Managing independent instances with few players was more manageable than to keep an eye on a huge world with thousands. Finally, notorious loners were able to apply NPC characters and thus to struggle without human players. Although the I of the computer fellow was very simple, however, was enough for the mastering of most missions. Far from cities and outposts you only get rid of closed group — you do not suddenly meet foreign players who also explore the real summits. The areas in GW1 are instanced. Source: Guild The limitation of the number of players had only a real disadvantage: you could not just change a battle with other players. To do this, one had to go into one of the species for PVP competitions stemmed areas or arenas.

The same right for beginners and professionals

As the last Arena net wanted to revolutionize the concept of raining — or better stop it. For this reason, was already in Guild Wars already with Level 20 conclusion and no further increase more possible! For comparison: The Great Competitor World of Warcraft allowed triple at that time.

This design decision served better alignment between new and experienced players. For this, every character was allowed to learn two classes at the same time and combine their different skills together. So one could use as a magician spell, as a trailer perform a strong bow shot or motivate himself as a warrior with different battle crystals. Of course, there was also a hook that was supposed to prevent overpowering game figures: one was allowed to equip a maximum of eight skills and exchanges them only in the cities, which is why the player had to decide for a tactic before entering a new area. The species Style by Guild Wars 1 ensures that ancient areas still have a lot of charm — such as the Howard from Fact age. Source: Guild Another special feature of Guild Wars concerned the beautiful graphics of the game world: every area offered his own flair and could keep up with technically first-class single player games with technically first-class single player games. Thanks to creative color design and beautiful 3D buildings, the first guild was even surprisingly good today. The destroyed Salon is a crass shock after the idyllic tutorial in Guild Wars 1. Source: Guild No less brilliant was the advanced story of history, especially as to the entry. In the first few hours, they were still marching over juicy green meadows and attended small, sleepy villages until an attack did everything and turned the country into debris and ashes. Then the story performed a time jump of several years, whereupon your once so idyllic hometown salon of a ruin.

New classes and adult heroes

In 2006 followed as promised two add-ons that were allowed to buy and play without the main game: Guild Wars Fib rants and Guild Wars Nightfall. To avoid confusion, the original guild was missed the addition prophecies missed. Fact age played in a completely new world, which oriented itself on the local Asian culture and introduced two new classes: the assassins and the ritualistic. Unfortunately, the add-on could not make a visually not to his magnificent precursor and looked rather boring in some areas. In addition, after a few hours you reached the level maximum, while the other way you could complete a few particularly nasty missions together with a foreign team — which increased the level of difficulty unnecessarily.

The second standalone add-on night case once again laid the focus on a brand new EVE campaign whose world reminded of the Ancient Egypt or the Ancient Rome. There were so-called heroes, which could be created and put into his party. In contrast to ordinary NPCs, they were allowed to give them limited commands and, for example, prescribe the use of a certain skill.

On the next page, it continues — with the celebrated sequel, its enlargements and an overview of the strengths of the new world, whose mechanics are strongly different from those in its predecessor.

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